


seventy-two hours

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Maybe Not Canon Compliant, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Pining, Season 2, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Tension, call me jake peralta bc i'm in love with amy santiago, casework, depends on how you wanna interpret it, set between defense rests and johnny and dora, they haven't slept in three days....
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 04:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15135221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: maybe he can’t be in love with her (not now, not yet, maybe not ever), but he can need her, and he does, hedoes.(after being in the precinct for seventy-two hours working a maybe unsolvable case, detectives jacob peralta and amy santiago really do need to sleep)





	seventy-two hours

**Author's Note:**

> tropiest of tropes. it accidentally got kinda angsty. ENJOY

The soft buzz of the fluorescent lights of the precinct is boring into Jake’s brain. 

(He can’t sleep.) 

He sits at his desk, rolling back and forth and back and forth. The squeaking and wobbling of his chair’s half-broken wheels are among the only noises in the whole room. Clumsily, groggily, he rubs at his dry and fluttering-closed eyes. Back and forth and back and forth, he flips through a case file he’s read thousands upon thousands of times. The words are blurring in front of his eyes. The rustling is piercing to his weary ears.

“How long has it been since I slept?” he mumbles aloud, blinking slowly and looking up. The room is empty, populated only by metal desks and the buzz of the lights and the distant humming of the heater. The desk across from him is, if anything, emptier; Amy must’ve-- no, she wouldn’t leave. She’s just… not there. It’s almost shocking (her weary face across from his has been, in some odd, twisted way, a replacement of sleep). Stumblingly, Jake pushes himself up to his feet with a hand on the desk. He almost falls over, still blinking unsteadily. 

(And he can’t sleep.) 

“Santiago,” he calls out, voice rough and grating. He winces at the sound of it. There’s no answer. 

They’ve been at the precinct for 72 hours now working this goddamn case, the death of two teenagers weighing down on them heavier than their exhaustion ever could. Dimly, he remembers the assignment, their sergeant handing it to them with grave eyes. _I know if any of my detectives can solve this one, it’s you two,_ he’d said, sliding the thin file across the table. Amy had nodded earnestly, and Jake had given Terry a half-smile. _We will,_ Jake had replied firmly, and, just for a second, they looked at each other, maybe just to look, to see. And they knew they could, of course-- for all their bickering and tension (the former having always been there, the latter having been borne from too many things to count, from _romantic stylez_ to the incident at the inn, practically an a to z in their dysfunctional friendship), they’re silently and unanimously recognized as the most brilliant detectives in the whole of the Nine-Nine, and as a team they’re practically unstoppable, even if they do drive each other mad in the process. 

(So he’s not allowed to sleep, not until he solves the case, not until at least everyone else gets to. He can’t sleep.)

The first few hours were easy, all door duty and general recon. Like always, they’d bantered and bickered and laughed and worked. But, inevitably, they hit a roadblock: the sheer mass of possible perps. The kids had been killed at a party with literally hundreds of other teenagers but no witnesses (and if there were, they weren’t talking). Since then, the two detectives went over the case again and again and again, but other than narrowing the list down from one hundred to twenty-five, they were lost. 

Jake sighs and rubs at his temples. A headache has been building since hour 49 (by Amy’s count, of course, not his; he’s no longer aware of time at all), and it doesn’t seem to be relenting any time soon. 

(They’d established it when things had started getting hopeless, around hour 17; they can’t let themselves sleep, no matter what.) 

“Santiago?” he calls again, coughing a little. His throat hurts from hours of misuse. “Amy?” he tries, rapping his knuckles nervously against his desk. Drowsily, the detective stumbles into the breakdown, but there’s a bit of panic fluttering against his ribcage. “Ames?” 

Before he can get any louder, he sees the shadowy form curled up on the couch, facing away from the harsh light of the bullpen. As his eyes adjust to the dim light, he can see the edges of a rumpled three-day-old pantsuit draped around a thin frame, and the tenseness in his chest relaxes. Maybe it’s the stress of the case, maybe it’s the days since he’s slept or even left the precinct, but the worry that maybe his partner had left or had something happen to her-- he can’t think about it. 

The Jake from hours 1-71 might have teased her for falling asleep, but he can’t.

(Maybe he can’t be in love with her, not now, not yet, maybe not ever, but he can need her, and he does, he _does._ He knows that.

He just can’t let himself rest, but he can’t work either, not without her smiling tiredly at him over their computers and brushing hair out of her eyes. He can’t sleep.) 

Hesitantly, he sits down on the well-worn, patchy couch next to her and sinks into the material with a soft groan. Next to him, Amy stirs, murmuring something under her breath and shifting. 

“Shhh,” Jake soothes without thinking, placing a gentle, light hand on her shoulder. “Go back to sleep.” 

(Even if he can’t, she should. He should, too, but--)

Another quiet murmur, but she inches closer to him, head coming down to rest on his thigh. He freezes up-- what else can he do? The smooth curve of her cheek is resting against his leg, crescents of eyelashes brushing against the rough fabric of his unwashed jeans. Even in the harsh, distant light of the bullpen, he can make out the delicate bones of her fingers where they rest on top of his knee. His breath and his heart and everything keeping him alive is all caught up in his throat, and it _has_ to be the long hours or the exhaustion or the stress or anything other than what he knows it to be that’s creating this soft, panging ache knotted in his chest just behind his sternum and in front of his heart. 

(Just-- Amy Santiago looks so _pretty_ when she’s focused on something. A line shows up between her eyebrows and she does this cute little squint and her mouth turns down a bit at one of the edges and her nose crinkles up. Her finger brushes over whatever page she’s examining, following the words and her eyes to make sure she doesn’t miss anything, and after three days of staying awake, her hair is mostly out of her ponytail and hanging in clumps around her head and her eyes have ocean-deep bags and her voice rasps a little on its way out of her throat and her hands shake a little bit from hunger and caffeine consumption and Jake still can’t get her out of his head, out of his heart. It’s the exhaustion, he tells himself, but he can’t sleep, can hardly remember the last time he did.) 

Before he can think better of it _(don’t sleep don’t sleep don’t sleep),_ he swings his legs up onto the couch, jostling his partner a bit, but by some miracle of intense exhaustion and Jake’s often-awful luck, she still doesn’t wake up. Instead, she just makes a humming noise deep in her throat and curls closer, moving her head up to his stomach and her hand up to his chest, laying just above his heart. Jake inhales sharply and stills, as if the very action of his rising and falling chest will wake her up instantly, make her realize this is all a mistake, because this is his partner, his friend, this is _Amy,_ so intelligent and bold and sharp and ambitious and fiery, and she can’t actually want to fall asleep on the chest of the detective she’s spent most of her career fighting and eventually grudgingly working with and even befriending, much to their mutual shock and (not that they’d actually say it) happiness. 

But against his better judgment, his hand is already finding its place on the small of her back, a solid, comforting weight against her spine, and his other hand moves slowly to her unwashed, messy, dark hair, idly smoothing it down. 

He exhales, slow and soft. 

(Amy Santiago looks pretty when she’s sleeping, too: all gentle breathing and tiny, twitching movements and unconscious tensing of the lips. Jake smiles down at her relaxed, almost peaceful face, and he thinks about, for a moment, tracing his pointer finger along the curve of her lips, her cheek, her orbital bone, her jawline, but, of course, he thinks better of it and squeezes his eyes shut tight.) 

Maybe, in their senseless, incoherent dreams, they can let themselves be in love for real, not this half-love that can’t be seen or touched.

For the first time in three days, they sleep.)

**Author's Note:**

> (that morning, terry, rosa, and holt in that order notice them sleeping, curled together like that on the couch with arms wrapping around each other like one single creature. holt closes the door and draws the blinds. they keep charles away. and, at exactly hour 83, they wake up and get back to work, and no one talks about it, not once.) 
> 
> anyways.......... tell me if you enjoyed that!! this is messy fluffy angst, and i hope you guys enjoyed it :) i'm fishycorvid on tumblr too if you wanna talk about anything!


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